Microsoft freezes legacy support charges

Microsoft is freezing the price it charges customers that continue running legacy versions of its business software.

Citing the global economic downturn Microsoft said the price for joining its custom support program would not be raised this year, and it will maintain the 2008 pricing.

Custom support applies to products that have exceeded their official support cycle and are no longer being maintained or fixed by Microsoft.

"This price change provides cost savings to Microsoft customers and enables them to maintain support on older versions of Microsoft products until they have had the opportunity to complete their migration to supported versions," the company said.

The company provides up to 10 years of mainstream and extended support for its business and development software - products like Windows XP or Visual Studio 2005 - after they become generally available. These cover the provision of security updates and other hotfixes - the latter being through an additional support agreement under the extended support phase.

After 10 years, though, support is on a self-help basis with customers gluing together knowledge from online information, web casts and Microsoft's knowledge base.

Clearly, though, that's not enough for many organizations - especially enterprises - where there exists layers of legacy technology that upgrade out of existence slowly. ®